Recently relevant in my life. I reported in yesterday’s posting “Sticks and cubes”:
I said to Kim (who was preparing for a grocery run tomorrow) that I could use a stick of butter for cooking
— because I was in the middle of making a mirepoix to enhance the flavor of some canned white clam sauce: chopped celery, carrots, bell peppers. mushrooms, and herbs, but with olive oil rather than my usual butter. (Not only does it provide flavor to all sorts of dishes, it’s wonderfully aromatic while it’s cooking. The scent of my Swiss grandmother’s kitchen; I don’t know what name she used for it, but it was a regular ingredient in her cooking.)
Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a posting about Swiss steak, in which mirepoix often figures. Pounding meat, braising, mirepoix, and (for most people, though apparently not James Beard) tomatoes.
